Saratoga Performing Arts Center is the traditional venue for commencement services for the College.
Diverse artistry thrives at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the cultural hub of upstate New York, the Hudson Valley, Vermont, the Berkshires, Connecticut, and nearby Canada.
SPAC hosts the New York City Ballet and The Philadelphia Orchestra in an acoustically ideal amphitheatre in the heart of Spa State Park; presents superior chamber music, jazz, rock and pop concerts, opera, and Saratoga Wine & Food Festival; and oversees the National Museum of Dance.
The SPAC Amphitheatre was created as a nurturing environment for great art. One hundred ten feet high (the equivalent of 10 stories), it is sited in a natural, curved bowl surrounded by towering pines and sweeping lawns. Inside are sheltered seats for 5,200 people; outside, the sloping lawn accommodates an additional 20,000.
The stage was designed to accommodate a full symphony orchestra, with a floor especially engineered for NYCB. Arnold H. Vollmer designed the floor honoring the wishes of George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein making the original floor a design marvel. With insights from Maestro Ormandy and working with a scale model and exotic testing devices, Paul S. Veneklassen designed a series of baffles and sound-reflecting surfaces to draw out the full depth of the music, making SPAC one of the world's most acoustically acclaimed outdoor performance venues.